Zola Pieterse finds peace in native land

Zola Budd has good reason to remember Britain with fear and loathing. To a naive but gifted teenage athlete, it seemed to represent a well of opportunity beyond the curse of apartheid in her native South Africa. More significantly, it represented the chance to fulfil a childhood dream.

But the dream soon turned into a nightmare. The awful roar of a partisan crowd as Budd inadvertently sent America's golden girl Mary Decker out of the 3,000m at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics still rings in her ears today.

It triggered brutal rites of passage for Budd, who had already had to endure being the centre of anti-apartheid demonstrations in the country that was supposed to be home.

A political pawn in several continents, she subsequently had to endure the divorce of her parents, the murder of her father amid allegations he was gay and malicious gossip about her own marriage to Mike Pieterse, a South African businessman.

It is hardly surprising that Zola Pieterse, as she now prefers to be known, wishes she had never embarked upon her British misadventure.

Her abiding memory of her first look at England is one of gloom. "I was struck by the dullness, the greyness, the dampness," she said of the April day in 1984 when she stepped on British soil for the first time. "Coming from South Africa, where the sun is shining for 320 days per year, that was probably the biggest contrast for me."

Pieterse, who fled Britain for good in 1988 amid claims she was close to suicide, stopped competing after representing South Africa in the 1996 World Cross Country Championships.

The Pieterse of today, a 39-year-old mother of three brimming with self-assurance, is an altogether different animal to the frightened fawn appearing before a packed press conference 21 years ago.

"I was not aware of everything that was going on at that time," she told the Guardian yesterday. "Looking back ... it's hard to understand what all the fuss was about as things changed in just a few years. When you look at all the things that have happened in the world, it seems very small."

Pieterse said the controversy surrounding her running career seemed far away. "It's like reading a novel about a totally different person."

Pieterse now lives in Bloemfontein, where she was raised. Her children, Lisa, nine, and seven-year-old twins Michael and Azelle, dominate her daily routine, but she still runs about 10 miles a day - with one slight difference.

"I no longer run barefoot," she said. "As I got older I had injuries to my hamstring. I found that wearing shoes gives me more support and protection from injuries."